Image courtesy of Warner Brothers.
“Jupiter Ascending” Starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum, Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Douglas Booth, and Tuppence Middleton. Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski. 127 minutes. Rated PG-13. Mladen’s take Ignore the critics – except me and Del, if he agrees with… READ MORE
My 1987 Nissan Pulsar is parked in front of my old townhouse, Unit 3F at 215 Hughes Avenue in Fort Walton Beach behind Uptown Station. I lived there 24 years. Image by Del Stone Jr.
I’m gone from the townhouse. It was a sad moment. I spent the morning hauling boxes of books and photo albums from the upstairs bedroom, what was once my office where I wrote “Dead Heat,” “Black Tide” and “I Feed… READ MORE
My final memory of that training day – Saturday, May 26, 1979 – was Jim Shoffner handing me a fat three-ring binder to study. It was the instruction manual for the ECRM 7600 (today they're in PDF form online and called “documentation”).
As I was heading home, driving my dad’s truck down Denton Boulevard in Fort Walton Beach, who should I see but Scott Jacobs, a member of my boy’s tennis team, running along the roadside carrying his saxophone case. I think he was in the Pryor Junior High School Band and was heading to some band event. He stopped and waved; I waved back and kept going. It didn't occur to me until days later that maybe he thought I’d give him a ride. Sorry about that, Scott!
Then I went home, spread out on my bed, and studied the manual. By today’s standards it was fairly simple – how to copy a file, route a file from one queue to another, create and delete a file, and how to mark up copy for typesetting. Headlines used a code (delta) h (delta) p and then the typesize. Body copy codes were formatted into simple markup codes - (delta) f1, f2, f3 with default widths for each. If you wanted a different width you had to tack on a “set-measure.” For instance, for the width to be 16 picas instead of 12.3 picas, you used (delta) f3@sm1600@ .
Good lord. I can't believe I still remember that.
Somehow I learned the computer system. New hires were terrified of the computer system and later I would become responsible for training them, a job I still perform, although there's much, MUCH more to teach these days. Luckily, most people come into the office already knowing how to use a computer.
Back then, never!
About the author:
Del Stone Jr. is a professional fiction writer. He is known primarily for his work in the contemporary dark fiction field, but has also published science fiction and contemporary fantasy. Stone's stories, poetry and scripts have appeared in publications such as Amazing Stories, Eldritch Tales, and Bantam-Spectra's Full Spectrum. His short fiction has been published in The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII; Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; the Pocket Books anthology More Phobias; the Barnes & Noble anthologies 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, and 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories; the HWA anthology Psychos; and other short fiction venues, like Blood Muse, Live Without a Net, Zombiesque and Sex Macabre. Stone's comic book debut was in the Clive Barker series of books, Hellraiser, published by Marvel/Epic and reprinted in The Best of Hellraiser anthology. He has also published stories in Penthouse Comix, and worked with artist Dave Dorman on many projects, including the illustrated novella “Roadkill,” a short story for the Andrew Vachss anthology Underground from Dark Horse, an ashcan titled "December" for Hero Illustrated, and several of Dorman's Wasted Lands novellas and comics, such as Rail from Image and “The Uninvited.” Stone's novel, Dead Heat, won the 1996 International Horror Guild's award for best first novel and was a runner-up for the Bram Stoker Award. Stone has also been a finalist for the IHG award for short fiction, the British Fantasy Award for best novella, and a semifinalist for the Nebula and Writers of the Future awards. His stories have appeared in anthologies that have won the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Two of his works were optioned for film, the novella “Black Tide” and short story “Crisis Line.”
Stone recently retired after a 41-year career in journalism. He won numerous awards for his work, and in 1986 was named Florida's best columnist in his circulation division by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2001 he received an honorable mention from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his essay “When Freedom of Speech Ends” and in 2003 he was voted Best of the Best in the category of columnists by Emerald Coast Magazine. He participated in book signings and awareness campaigns, and was a guest on local television and radio programs.
As an addendum, Stone is single, kills tomatoes and morning glories with ruthless efficiency, once tied the stem of a cocktail cherry in a knot with his tongue, and carries a permanent scar on his chest after having been shot with a paintball gun. He’s in his 60s as of this writing but doesn't look a day over 94.
Contact Del at [email protected]. He is also on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, tumblr, TikTok, and Instagram. Visit his website at delstonejr.com .
My final memory of that training day – Saturday, May 26, 1979 – was Jim Shoffner handing me a fat three-ring binder to study. It was the instruction manual for the ECRM 7600 (today they’re in PDF form online and… READ MORE
Image courtesyof 20th Century Studios.
“Taken 3” Starring Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, and Maggie Grace. Directed by Olivier Megaton. 109 minutes. Rated PG-13 Del’s take There were three of us and we wanted to see three different movies. The candidates were “Blackhat,” “The Imitation Game”… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Queer Culture Cinema. — “Last Summer” Starring Samuel Pettit, Sean Rose. Directed by Mark Thiedeman. 1 hour, 13 minutes. Rated TV-13. Streaming on Vudu. Del’s take Director Mark Thiedeman’s tone poem about two high school lovers, bound… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures. — “Fury” Starring Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, and Jon Bernthal. Directed by David Ayer. 134 minutes. Rated R. Mladen’s take Remember Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush administration’s principal civilian architect of the… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Roadshow Films.
“The Rover” Starring Guy Pearce as Eric, Robert Pattinson as Rey, Scoot McNairy as Henry, and others. Directed by David Michod. 1 hour, 43 minutes. Rated R. Streaming on most major platforms except Netflix. Plot summary: It’s the end of… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Warner Brothers. — “Edge of Tomorrow” Starring Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton. Directed by Doug Liman. 113 minutes. Rated PG-13. Del’s take Didn’t Mladen, at some point during one of his hyperbolic rants, swear he’d never… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Warner Brothers. “Godzilla” Starring Aaron Taylor Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Brian Cranston. Directed by Gareth Edwards. 123 minutes. Rated PG-13. Mladen’s take: The obvious first. The new Godzilla film stinks. Don’t let Del’s opinion fool you. He doesn’t… READ MORE
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
“Avalanche Sharks” Starring Alexander Mendeluk, Kate Nauta, Benjamin Easterday, Eric Scott Woods, and others. Directed (if you can call it that) by Scott Wheeler. Amazon Prime. 82 minutes. Not Rated Mladen’s take This is an embarrassing confession. Maybe the error… READ MORE